The answer, in brief, is that it has been the undeviating policy of Bulgaria, ever since her own emancipation by Russia in 1877, to free the Bulgarians still under the Ottoman yoke and unite them in a common fatherland. The Great Bulgaria which was created by Russia in the treaty she forced on Turkey—the Treaty of San Stefano—was constructed under the influence of the idea of a union of the Bulgarian race in a single state under a common government. This treaty was afterward torn to pieces by the Congress of Berlin, which set up for the Bulgarians a very diminutive principality. But the Bulgarians, from the palace down to the meanest hut, have always been animated by that racial and national idea. The annexation of Eastern Roumelia in 1885 was a great step in the direction of its realization. And it was to carry that programme to completion that Bulgaria made war against Turkey in 1912. Her primary object was the liberation of the Bulgarians in Macedonia and their incorporation in a Great Bulgaria. And the Treaty of Partition with Servia seemed, in the event of victory over Turkey, to afford a guarantee of the accomplishment of her long-cherished purpose. It was a strange irony of fate that while as a result of the geographical situation of the belligerents Bulgaria, at the close of the war with Turkey, found herself in actual occupation of all European Turkey from the Black Sea up to the River Struma and beyond,—that is, all Thrace to Chataldja as well as Eastern Macedonia—her allies were in possession of the bulk of Macedonia, including the entire triangle she had planned to inject between the frontiers of New Servia and New Greece!
The Bulgarians claimed this triangle on ethnological grounds. Its inhabitants, they asseverated, were their brethren, as genuinely Bulgarian as the subjects of King Ferdinand.
RACIAL PROPAGANDA IN MACEDONIA
Of all perplexing subjects in the world few can be more baffling than the distribution of races in Macedonia. The Turks classify the population, not by language or by physical characteristics, but by religion. A Greek is a member of the Orthodox Church who recognizes the patriarch of Constantinople; a Bulgarian, on the other hand, is one of the same religious faith who recognizes the exarch; and since the Servians in Turkey have no independent church but recognize the patriarchate they are often, as opposed to Bulgarians, called Greeks. Race, being thus merged in religion—in something that rests on the human will and not on physical characteristics fixed by nature—can in that part of the world be changed as easily as religion. A Macedonian may be a Greek to-day, a Bulgarian to-morrow, and a Servian next day. We have all heard of the captain in the comic opera who "in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations" remained an Englishman. There would have been nothing comic in this assertion had the redoubtable captain lived in Macedonia. In that land a race is a political party composed of members with common customs and religion who stand for a "national idea" which they strenuously endeavor to force on others.
Macedonia is the land of such racial propaganda. As the Turkish government forbids public meetings for political purposes, the propaganda takes an ecclesiastical and linguistic form. Each "race" seeks to convert the people to its faith by the agency of schools and churches, which teach and use its own language. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the Greeks, owing to their privileged ecclesiastical position in the Ottoman Empire, had exclusive spiritual and educational jurisdiction over the members of the Orthodox Church in Macedonia. The opposition of the Bulgarians led, as we have already seen, to the establishment in 1870 of the exarchate, that is, of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church with the exarch at its head. The Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia demanded the appointment of bishops to conduct churches and schools under the authority of the exarchate. In 1891 the Porte conceded Bulgarian bishops to Ochrida and Uskub, in 1894 to Veles and Nevrokop, and in 1898 to Monastir, Strumnitza, and Dibra. As has been well said, the church of the exarchate was really occupied in creating Bulgarians: it offered to the Slavonic population of Macedonia services and schools conducted in a language which they understood and showed a genuine interest in their education. By 1900 Macedonia had 785 Bulgarian schools, 39,892 pupils, and 1,250 teachers.
The Servian propaganda in Macedonia was at a disadvantage in comparison with the Bulgarian because it had not a separate ecclesiastical organization. As we have already seen, the orthodox Serbs owe allegiance to the Greek patriarch in Constantinople. And at first they did not push their propaganda as zealously or as successfully as the Bulgarians. In fact the national aspirations of the people of Servia had been in the direction of Bosnia and Herzegovina; but after these provinces were assigned to Austria by the Treaty of Berlin, a marked change of attitude occurred in the Servian government and nation. They now claimed as Servian the Slavonic population of Macedonia which hitherto Bulgaria had cultivated as her own. The course of politics in Bulgaria, notably her embroilment with Russia, inured to the advantage of the Servian propaganda in Macedonia, which after 1890 made great headway. The Servian government made liberal contributions for Macedonian schools. And before the nineteenth century closed the Servian propaganda could claim 178 schools in the vilayets of Saloniki and Monastir and in Uskub with 321 teachers and 7,200 pupils.
These Slav propagandists made serious encroachments upon the Greek cause, which, only a generation earlier, had possessed a practical monopoly in Macedonia. Greek efforts too were for a time almost paralyzed in consequence of the disastrous issue of the Greco-Turkish war in 1897. Nevertheless in 1901 the Greeks claimed 927 schools in the vilayets of Saloniki and Monastir with 1,397 teachers and 57,607 pupils.
RACIAL FACTS AND FALLACIES
The more bishops, churches, and schools a nationality could show, the stronger its claim on the reversion of Macedonia when the Turk should be driven out of Europe! There was no doubt much juggling with statistics. And though schools and churches were provided by Greeks, Servians, and Bulgarians to satisfy the spiritual and intellectual needs of their kinsmen in Macedonia, there was always the ulterior (which was generally the dominant) object of staking out claims in the domain soon to drop from the paralyzed hand of the Turk. The bishops may have been good shepherds of their flocks, but the primary qualification for the office was, I imagine, the gift of aggressive political leadership. The Turkish government now favored one nationality and now another as the interests of the moment seemed to suggest. With an impish delight in playing off Slav against Greek and Servian against Bulgarian, its action on applications for bishoprics was generally taken with a view to embarrassing the rival Christian nationalities. And it could when necessary keep the propagandists within severe limits. The Bulgarians grew bold after securing so many bishoprics in the nineties and the bishop at Uskub thought to open new schools and churches. But the Turkish governor—the Vali—summoned him and delivered this warning: "O Bulgarian, sit upon the eggs you have, and do not burst your belly by trying to lay more."
How are we to determine the racial complexion of a country in which race is certified by religion, in which religion is measured by the number of bishops and churches and schools, in which bishops and churches and schools are created and maintained by a propaganda conducted by competing external powers, and in which the results of the propaganda are determined largely by money and men sent from Sofia, Athens, and Belgrade, subject always to the caprice and manipulation of the Sultan's government at Constantinople?